Chapter 8 Running a Tournament

Chapter 8Running a Tournament

This chapter covers the running of a tournament on the day itself. Much of
the work happens on the day, and it is therefore useful to ﬁnd some local
players who are willing to help with various tasks such as putting up signs
directing people to the playing room, registration, laying out tables and
carrying boards into the playing room.

8.1 Before the Tournament

On the morning of the tournament, you should make sure that visitors can
ﬁnd the venue easily, perhaps by placing signs directing them to the
venue. It is also helpful if you can ﬁnd volunteers to arrive early to lay
out tables and boards (and, if applicable, the BGA Bookshop). Each
board should be labelled with a number. If there is more than one
playing room, label the doors clearly with the numbers to be found in
that room There are various other useful bits of preparation you can
do:

When people have entered in advance, enter their names into
the draw computer before opening registration. This can take a
surprisingly long time when you are in a hurry!

If you are doing a draw by hand, prepare the cards in advance, as
described in section 8.3.2.

Set aside an area for a noticeboard, where you can place the draw,
results sheets, a summary of the rules (i.e. time limits, komi, etc).

Bring a cash ﬂoat; you will need to have a some change, as people
will pay with £20 notes.

Bring a good supply of scrap paper, blu-tak, marker pens and
other stationery equipment.

Put the kettle on and open the biscuits!

Set up a table for registration. You should have a list of the people you
are expecting to register, including details such as name, grade, club and
whether they have paid in advance (or how much their entry fee will be). You
should conﬁrm these details when they register, particularly their
grade, as this could easily have changed between their entry and the
tournament.

8.2 General Points

It is important to ﬁnd a non-playing organiser for your go tournament, since
the work involved in running a tournament is not conﬁned to the time
between rounds. A non-playing organiser is better able to deal with
problems which might occur during games, such as broken clocks or
running out of coffee or biscuits.

You may ﬁnd that you have an odd number of entries. It is strongly
recommended not to give any player a bye, and so you should have one
player willing to act as a ghost, who will only play if required to make an
even number. Note that for various reasons, some players may not wish to
play in all rounds.

If a player is late for a round, you should instruct their opponents to
start the clock. You may ﬁnd that some people are reluctant to do this out of
politeness, but if they do not, you risk running late! (If it is white who has
not turned up, black should start the clock, make his move, then start
white's clock).

8.3 Organising The Draw

If the organiser has not run a tournament before, he should receive
assistance when he makes the draw. This can be given by one of the
participants in the tournament; several BGA officers are willing to help if
asked. Chapter 9 gives a more detailed overview of the McMahon system
used by many British tournaments.

8.3.1 Using a Computer

Most tournaments nowadays use a computer to produce the draw. Most
tournaments in Britain use Geoff Kaniuk's GoDraw program. Using
this is recommended by the BGA in particular because there will
almost certainly be people at the tournament who can help with its
operation, and also because it is used to process tournament results.
If you do choose to use GoDraw, a donation to the Castledine-Barnes trust, a charitable
trust providing ﬁnancial support to young Go players in Britain, is
requested.

Other programs are available, including Gotha, written by Luc Vannier, and MacMahon
[sic], written by Christophe Gerlach, both of which are popular in Europe.
These programs all handle McMahon, Swiss and Round-robin style
tournaments.

Chapter 10 provides further details of good practice for using a computer
to do the draw.

8.3.2 Producing a Draw by Hand

Although most tournaments use a computer, smaller events, or events
with unusual pairing systems, may still prefer to do the draw by
hand.

Each player is given an identifying number and has a card (e.g. a
postcard) made out as depicted in ﬁgure 8.1. The card is used to keep track
of the player's current McMahon score, and other relevant details such as
who they have played, which colour they took, and whether they were drawn
up or down. The draw is performed by shuffling these cards around a
suitable table top. It will be found useful to have a large table out of range of
the "helpful" comments of the players for this purpose. Do not use paper as
it blows away; small pieces, however, can be used stuck to a glass sheet with
Blutak.

The card illustrated in ﬁgure 8.1 is appropriate for a six round
tournament. Each box gives details of one round of the tournament. This
player has played four rounds, losing in rounds one and three, and winning
in rounds two and four, with a current MMS of -2. It is important for
purposes of presentation of results that the players' identifying numbers
should be in order of entry strength. This means that the numbers should
not be allocated until the last possible moment (it can even be done as late
as during the ﬁrst round).

Figure 8.1:

Draw Card

No two players should meet more than once, and, if possible, players
from the same club should not meet (except where either could win the
tournament). It is also a good idea to ensure that players from the same
family do not meet (even if they play in different clubs).

8.4 Presenting The Results

Results should be recorded on a wall chart as the tournament progresses,
and a ﬁnal set of results in similar format should be compiled for circulation
afterwards. An example of the recommended format is shown in ﬁgure 8.2,
but in any case it should be easy to see at a glance how many games each
player has won, and who his opponents have been. Here, player number 42
lost in round 1, won in rounds 2,3 and 4, and scored a jigo in round
5.

Name

Grade

Club

1

2

3

4

5

Total

41

F. Baggins

4 kyu

The Shire

142

239

338

340

344

3

42

F. Prefect

4 kyu

Betelgeuse

041

144

243

339

337

3

43

. . .

Figure 8.2:

Results Chart

Players should be ordered according to their starting grades, and
numbers should correspond with those on the cards used in making the
draw.

In addition to this display (and even more important than it) a list of
players' opponents and table numbers for each round should be
displayed, indicating clearly which player takes Black. This list can
conveniently be used for the players to record their results on (by
underlining or circling the winner's name). For larger tournaments, or for
those who prefer a more streamlined system, a separate result slip
can be provided for each game for each round, to be ﬁlled in and
returned by the winner. If these slips are put on the boards at the start
of the round, the scrummage caused by large numbers of players
trying to read the draw can be reduced, although this process could
slow down the draw considerably unless a computer print-out is
used.

If you are using a computer program to do the draw, it is very likely that
the program can produce all of the necessary displays, including the score
table and the draw, automatically.

8.5 Side Events

8.5.1 Novices Tournament

Some events run a tournament for novices alongside the main event. This is
particularly worth considering if there are a lot of local players (especially
from local schools) who are new to the game and would otherwise
be reluctant to enter a tournament. There does not have to be a
large turnout for this to be worthwhile; even as few as four makes it
viable.

It is advisable to call it a "novices" tournament rather than a "beginners"
tournament, as this makes it easier to get people who have been playing for
a while to take part. In particular, juniors who have been playing
for a few years and are in the 20-30 kyu range seem unhappy at
the idea of being called a beginner ("novices" seems to be tolerated
better).

Tournament Format

It is good to be ﬂexible about the format until you see who turns up. The
general form is to hold a teaching session in the morning, covering the rules
and some basic tactics such as capturing races and life and death, followed
by a tournament in the afternoon.

For the tournament itself, things like board size, clocks etc. will depend
on the players. In general most people at these grades do not need clocks.
People who have hardly played before might ﬁnd 13x13 to be quite big
whereas someone near 20 kyu is likely to much prefer 13x13 to 9x9. Past
events, e.g. the Novices Tournament at the 2005 Cambridge Trigantius,
have had a wide range of players - the strongest had been playing online a
bit and were probably slightly stronger than 20 kyu, the weakest
weren't very sure of the basic rules. The games were a mixture of
9x9 and 13x13. There are usually some handicap games and it is
good to try to arrange things so that nobody loses all their games if
possible.

Advertising

The best form of advertising for such an event is word of mouth - if people
(especially at the local club) can encourage novice players that they know to
come along it makes a big difference, especially as these players are
often nervous about taking part. Any groups of juniors who are not
too far away are also worth targetting. The sooner the event can be
conﬁrmed the better (and also it helps to have an explicit box on the
entry form to say whether people want to enter the main or novices'
event).

8.5.2 Self Pairing Tournaments

It is common to hold self pairing tournaments as side events. The idea is
that players who ﬁnish their main tournament games early can play further
games between rounds. These side events are usually played on smaller
boards, or on a full size board with fast time limits. Usually there is a
restriction that a player can play each opponent at most twice. The simplest
method of choosing the winner is by number of wins, although other more
complex formulae are possible.

All you need to do to hold such an event is make a wall chart, where
participating players enter their names and ﬁll in a running total of points
(and opponent number) for each game they play, as illustrated in Figure
8.3.

1

Gandalf

13

22

23

. . .

2

A. Dumbledore

01

13

3

A. Dent

02

01

11

. . .

Figure 8.3:

Chart for Self Pairing Tournament

8.6 After the Tournament

You should send the results to the BGA Tournament Results coordinator
(email results at britgo dot org) as soon as possible after the
tournament. His preferred format is the output ﬁle from GoDraw but if
you have done the draw by hand, a copy of the draw sheets with
results will suffice. Even if you have done the draw by hand, it is
possible to use GoDraw to recreate the tournament and send in the
ﬁle.

You should also send a short report to the Tournament Coordinator
(email tournament-coordinator at britgo.org) for the BGA news web page,
listing prize winners and any other notable features.

The BGA Levy should be sent to the Treasurer using the form provided.
Arrangements should be made for the BGA sets to reach the next
tournament. Letters of thanks should be sent to any sponsors, including the
owners of premises used.

The results of your tournament may also have an effect on other BGA
events, as follows:

Candidates' Tournament Qualiﬁcation

Your tournament may be eligible for qualifying places for the
Candidates' Tournament, which is the ﬁrst stage of the British
Championship. The BGA web site includes the current championship rules, including all of
the qualiﬁcation criteria.

Stacey Grand Prix

Each game won above the McMahon bar in a BGA recognised
tournament counts one point towards the Grand Prix. The winner
becomes the holder of Terry Stacey Memorial Trophy for a year, so
it is important that the McMahon bar is set sensibly.

Youth Grand Prix

Players who are under-18 earn points by attending BGA
tournaments and winning at them. Forty percent of the points for
an event are for just turning up, the rest are for winning games.
The British Youth Go Championships counts double. Players of
1 kyu and 23 kyu are just as likely to win the trophies for ﬁrst,
second and third. Other prizes are often awarded too. Currently
the year is the calendar year and the prizes are presented at the
British Youth Go Championships.